I've been looking for a new Mac LJ client because Phoenix has crashed on me one too many times, losing a huge entry in progress. I'm test-driving both XJournal and iJournal and neither has quite the feel I'm used to, but I'm adjusting.

However today I noticed something that is a total deal-killer for me with iJournal, and wondered if it is something that is intended to be a part of the software. I had a partially-edited entry going, and went to open another entry window to paste in some links for another entry I intended to eventually write. iJournal asked me if I wanted to save my current entry and said if I didn't, my changes would be lost.

Now, I wasn't trying to close the current window, just open a new one. I have tested this multiple ways but it looks to me like iJournal doesn't allow you to have more than one window open at a time. Is this the case? This is totally bizarre behavior, if that's the case. Phoenix, XJournal, heck even Microsoft Word allow you to open multiple documents and work on more than one thing at a time.

I see that there's some inclarity about whether this client is being actively developed and supported, but if someone can comment, I'd appreciate it. I slightly prefer the interface of iJournal to XJournal (whose mechanism for creating image and text links is a bit wonky) but I'm in the habit of always having at least two journal entry windows open, sometimes more, and not being able to do so would totally kill the program's usefulness. I can't imagine I'm alone in working on multiple entries at once.

It was originally called LiveJournal(.app) and somewhere I have an email from Brad giving the nod that it was ok. I renamed it when I wanted to start supporting other servers (like deadjournal, etc) and not have confusion over people thinking it only supported LJ.

However, regardless of all of this, everyone stopped committing, and unsubscribed from the developer list.

I've been beating on it here and there but I haven't done a formal release in well over a year.

I'd certainly like to see a client that's got the features of Phoenix without the mysterious crashes. I think iJournal and XJournal have some advantages, like keyboard shortcuts for image insertion that differ from link insertion (anything to cut down on taking my hands off the keys) and easier ways of entering usernames. But neither has a full suite of the functions now available on LJ (XJournal just updated today with comment-screening options as well as fixing some odd window behaviors).

But I'm no programmer, just a user who can report back on my experience and preferences.

part of the problem is that you don't know the history of iJournal, so I understand your anger.

iJournal was modal to begin with, and was supposed to be a simply immediate editor for quick entries. It grew features and more features, then no one wanted to work on it anymore because it was so unwieldy.

Feel free to fix it :). I've got a local 2.0 branch but I've never released anything on it yet.

Uh, I'm not angry, just baffled why a program appears to be locked into having only one window open at a time. I don't know what "modal" means in this context, nor why that would mean having only one functioning window.

And, I'm not a programmer. So, update it or don't - like I say, I slightly prefer the interface, but the program has no utility to me in its current form, and my inquiry was intended to try and find out if this was really intended program behavior.

Ignore my annoyed sarcasm. Basically, the code started out as just a little status bar icon, with a dropdown window that you would edit and entry and click ok, so it basically just grew up wrong, and no one has ever gotten around to fixing it. The intention was that we were (and by were I mean like 2+ years ago) refactoring it to be multi-windowed with history support, basically getting all of the features into the code before redoing the interface. Sadly, it hasn't gotten past that stage.

The popularity of Livejournal has gone down, and the demand for anything beyond what the current clients provide have dwindled, so there's no push to continue development. Plus, I think everyone went off to make money doing other things.

Sorry it doesn't do what you want it to. It's on the TODO list, and someday someone might actually do it. :(